Origin

Derivatives

phreak

Ripping off the system was so convenient that it out-lived the anarchist ideology; increasingly the drive of phone phreaks was the empowering rush of mastering technology.

There was significant crossover between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as the legendary TAP Newsletter.

The story about the phone phreaks is a good one, detailing the lengths that people would go to get free long distance calls, back in the day when these calls were much more expensive than they are now.

phreaker

The telco fraudsters, dubbed phone phreakers, can make money by selling on, at a cheap rate, the knowledge and the phone number.

What piqued the interest of phreakers (phone hackers) was discovering that over a long distance connection, the cheap plastic whistle's pitch granted ‘operator mode’ - carte blanche to the telephone system.

The GSM Association admits the Israeli researchers are onto something but say the attack requires the use of complex technology, which few phone phreakers have access to, and would need to be targeted at a specific caller.